Contents

Lamott was born in San Francisco, and is a graduate of Drew School. She was a student at Goucher College for two years where she wrote for the newspaper.[3] Her father, Kenneth Lamott, was also a writer. Her first published novel Hard Laughter was written for him after his diagnosis of brain cancer. She has one son, Sam, who was born in August 1989 and a grandson, Jax, born in July 2009.[4][5]

Lamott's life was documented in Freida Lee Mock's 1999 documentary Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott.[6] Because of the documentary and her following on Facebook and other online networks, she is often called the "People's Author".[7]

Lamott has described why she writes:

I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.[8]

Lamott is cited as a writer who captures well the style of narrative nonfiction called "particularism", coined by Howard Freeman.[9]

On April 13, 2019, when Lamott was 65, she wed for the first time. She married Neal Allen, 63, a former vice president for marketing at the McKesson Corporation in San Francisco. The couple had met in August 2016 through OurTime, a matchmaking site for people over 50. He was a twice-divorced father of four, who had left his job at McKesson to devote himself to writing. He was living alone in a house in the woods in Lagunitas, Calif. She was the mother of 29-year-old Sam Lamott and the grandmother of his son, 9-year-old Jax Lamott. Seven months after Anne Lamott and Neal Allen's first date, they bought a run-down house together in Fairfax, Calif., which they renovated and made their shared home.[12]